GM Gainey sticks to his Habs guns

Bob Gainey’s telephone wasn’t ringing off the hook Wednesday, nor were there many outgoing calls from his Brossard office.

On a day when 22 trades were made, involving 45 players and 21 draft picks, not one involved the Canadiens.

The NHL’s trade deadline day came and went quietly for the Canadiens, and the team’s stoic general manager wasn’t nursing a broken heart

during French and English media scrums at 3:30 p.m., a half-hour after the clock struck a figurative midnight.

In fact, Gainey pretty much had been an early-bird, getting his shopping done in the two weeks before the craziness of the deadline. First came the trade of a couple of draft picks for Atlanta Thrashers defenceman Mathieu Schneider, then gritty Philadelphia Flyers forward Glen Metropolit was claimed off waivers.

Gainey said he had conversations with fellow GMs over the weekend to explore scenarios. But it seems no one’s pulse was racing with what was discussed.

“Without really coming up with a clear path towards improving our team, we weren’t out kicking tires,” he said. “I don’t really have regrets that none of the players who moved teams today didn’t come to our team. I prefer that we continue to get our guys to their potential.

“We have a number of players who have been a little below their potential this year for different reasons. This is the time for them to prove me right from last summer or this season, and for our coaches to take the players they have and squeeze as much or more out of this team than we’ve seen to this point.”

A gauntlet thrown down, then, not only to underachieving players, but to Gainey’s coaching staff.

Long have the Canadiens coveted a big, dominant centreman. The name on the lips of most fans, Olli Jokinen, is now a member of the Calgary Flames, a high-profile acquisition from the Phoenix Coyotes.

Fans in Montreal drooled at the prospect of wedging the 210 pounds of Jokinen’s 6-foot-3 frame into a CH sweater. But Gainey said the towering Finn was little more than a possibility for the Canadiens.

“You’re never certain what it would take for a team to decide to move the player (whose name) is floated around,” he said of Jokinen. “We didn’t show the type of pursuit of that player that would put us onto (the Coyotes’) list of being a good trading partner. …

“We’ve always been in pursuit of that type of player. We haven’t been able to bring one in, as yet. But there’s more than one way to win.

“Look at the Canadiens team that won (the Stanley Cup) in 1993. They didn’t have the players they needed, but they had the team on the ice that was able to compete and overcome their deficiencies or weaknesses as a team and play to their strengths.”

Minutes ticked to long hours yesterday as Canadiens fans waited for Gainey to pull the trigger on a deal. Any deal. But the steely-eyed head of the team’s hockey operations kept his holster buckled and gambles that the team he has will make a charge into the playoffs and enjoy a long run once there.

At no time, Gainey said, was he anxious to move players. He likes the depth at all positions, the crisis (his word) of a losing skid turned around, a power play bolstered by Schneider and a grinding depth added up front with Metropolit.

“Losing a string of (recent) games may have been part of the motivation to make those changes earlier rather than later,” he said. “We’ve gotten some results from those changes and now … we’re winning.”

He described the imminent return of Alex Tanguay, who last night missed his 28th game with a separated shoulder, as the equivalent of trading for a player.

Guillaume Latendresse, out with a shoulder injury, won’t be back for weeks and Francis Bouillon’s injured groin will keep him shelved indefinitely. Centre Robert Lang, out with a severed Achilles tendon, won’t be back unless the Canadiens go deep into the playoffs.

But with bodies returning, Gainey said in a thinly veiled challenge to his bench staff, “coaches have an opportunity to really maximize the diverseness of the players at their disposal. ... We have a more diverse groups of players than we had a year ago. We need to be aware … how to use a player.

“But our first objective, in the heat of a great (playoff) race now, is to get a spot and be playing after April 12.”

Perhaps surprisingly, versatile Mathieu Dandenault remains a Hab, though one who might continue to spend long stretches of the season’s final quarter in the press box.

One of a bushelful of unrestricted free agents come July, Dandenault was thought to be on his way out. Gainey shopped the veteran’s name, but found no takers.

As faxes and emails were still arriving at the NHL offices mid-afternoon, the GM refused to judge what his opposition had done in the Eastern Conference trade derby.

“Usually what bothers me more are the teams that don’t move, because they feel they have what they need and feel confident with what they have,” Gainey said.

“This is a vote of confidence to the players that we have. It’s a message to those who have been sidelined with injuries, and those who perhaps haven’t had the season that they and we had hoped for, that now is the time to get there.

“We were only going to move today if something came to us from out of left field. That didn’t happen.”

Baseball season. At least Gainey wasn’t talking about golf.

dstubbs@thegazette.canwest.com

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